During winter time is a nice to support bird life outside and offer them some "lunch". I made a little project and built with a bunch of kids (age of 8 and 9) during my son's birthday party - it was exciting to see the kids working on real stuff.

Update: Already in May we have decided to prepare a bunch of feeders for christmas market (yes, time is running) and prepared additional upgrades pieces. Key changes: other kind of wood and usage of laser engraving for a nicer design.

The design as Corel Files are attached, also the SketchUp drawing

Step 1: Prepare and Cut

Material:

it doesn't really matters which shape and size you're using, however I made mine out of OSB plates, MDF for the roof and tar paper for protection. Finally some hazelwood sticks and stone gave the whole a nicer look.

Of course you need some screws (2.5mm x 20mm + 3.5mm x35 mm) to fix anything.

Prepare material by cuting the material in the right size, form and drill accordingly.The attached ZIP file contains the drawing in more details.

The second ZIP file contains the SketchUp Drawing and also the CDR Files for Laser Engraving

Step 2: Sanding

Sanding is - as usual for wood work- some kind of essential.

I had a help doing that job :-)

Step 3: Mounting

As you already have drilled all the holes, it is easy to mount all parts together. It figured out that slightly larger screw for the front and back side are more useful.

Mount also the small side wood - this will prevent the fodder to fall outside the house once it swings in the wind.

The roof shall be assembled in a way, that the woods are touching at 90°

Step 4: Roofing

you have already mounted the MDF plate as roof, now add some tar on top to make it more robust against the effect of rain for longer term. To keep it in place we mount now some hazelnut sticks, cut them to length and fixed them with two screws each.

The tar overlap on the roof needs to be bend and kept in place by sticks as well. Finally you can use a hot air gun to make the overlap flexible and melt the tar undernear. Press gently with a piece of wood. Take car, this is bloody hot and you can hurt yourself seriously!

Finally I used the OSB pieces I cut from the front side (in the very first step), shorted them a bit and build out of it a chimney. Glue it simply by heating the tar underneath and press on the roof; also the top of the chimney gets some tar: this does not only protect from rain but also looks like heavily used.

Step 5: Done!

Take a plastic cord (~70cm) and thread to the two holes in the fron and back part, so you can easly hang them on a tree or such. As alternative you could build a stand and mount on that.

Of course, feel free and colour up by painting the bird house.